Have Mercy on Us All
In a small Parisian square, the ancient tradition of the town crier continues into modern times. The self-appointed crier, Joss Le Guern, reads out the daily news, snippets of gossip, and lately, ominous messages -- placed in his handmade wooden message box by an anonymous source -- that warn of...
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In a small Parisian square, the ancient tradition of the town crier continues into modern times. The self-appointed crier, Joss Le Guern, reads out the daily news, snippets of gossip, and lately, ominous messages -- placed in his handmade wooden message box by an anonymous source -- that warn of an imminent onset of the bubonic plague. Concerned, Le Guern brings the puzzling notes to the bumbling but brilliant Chief Inspector Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg and his straight-edged, right-hand man, Adrien Danglard. When strange signs that were historically believed to ward off the black death start to appear on the doors of several buildings, Adamsberg takes notice and suspects a connection with Le Guern's warnings. After a flea-bitten corpse with plague-like symptoms is found in one of the marked buildings, Fred Vargas's inimitable genius chief inspector is under pressure to solve the mystery and restore calm to a panicked Paris. But is it a real case of the bubonic scourge, or just a sinister trick designed to frighten as the body count grows and the culprit continues to elude the police? Peopled with charming and eccentric Gallic characters, and packed with gripping historical detail, Have Mercy on Us All is a complex, surprising, and stylish tale from France's finest mystery writer.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780743284011 (0743284011)
ASIN: 743284011
Publish date: November 8th 2005
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages no: 353
Edition language: English
Category:
European Literature,
Cultural,
Adult,
Mystery,
Detective,
Thriller,
Mystery Thriller,
Crime,
Noir,
Roman,
France,
Italian Literature
Series: Commissaire Adamsberg (#4)
The main character is a sailor from Breton who, presumably, speaks in a Breton dialect. So the translator, genius that he is, decided that the way to translate this is to make him sound like a lower-class british sailor 'heave-ho, on yer arse, mate... oh, lordy, lordy!' from Liverpool (or whatever)....
How to can you not like a detective who supervises 26 other homicide flics and needs to use mnemonics such as acne, prognathous, solicitude, Marcel to associate names with faces, and who indulges in self-examination along the lines of "You think you're a million miles away from the likes of Favre, ...
hat is a brilliant if somewhat quirky thriller. It's Adamsberg at the top of his game. Vargas writes an intricate tapestry of characters, a very scary bogey man, the threat of a black plague epidemic is a scary, scary thing. She uses history, psychology and an unorthodox way of putting things togeth...